“Now that the comedy is over, the chief confidant packs up—he quite filled that rôle, didn’t he?” she said. “And our fine jingling lady, Mrs. Fox-Darriel? Has she, too, folded her tents and stolen away?—not silently, I’ll be bound. She had staked something on the match.”
“She is gone. She spoke unkindly to me of Camelia. I do not like her. I could say nothing, it was so——”
“So neatly done. She implied, merely; you would have accepted inferences by recognizing them. I can hear her!”
“She felt for me. Camelia had gone too far—it didn’t look well; a girl must not overstep certain limits; one could make too much of a reputation for audacity; Camelia’s charm had been to be audacious, without seeming so. And the sad affair of Mr. Rodrigg—Camelia should not have stooped, and to no purpose; people turned on one so horridly. Poor Sir Arthur would lose his bill as well as his sweetheart, now that Camelia had meddled so disastrously. Oh! she was most unkind.” Lady Paton evidently remembered the unkindness—her voice was a curious echo.
Mrs. Jedsley ruminated energetically all the way back to the village, as, her skirts raised in either hand, she marched with heavy-booted splashes through the mud. Near the village she overtook Mary, bending as she walked, an umbrella uncomfortably wedged under one arm, several parcels encumbering her.
“My dear, why walk in this weather?” Mrs. Jedsley herself walked in all weathers, but for Mary, with a pleasant equine background, the necessity was not obvious; she joined her with the ejaculation.
“Oh! I like walking, Mrs. Jedsley,” said Mary. “Aunt Angelica always tells me to have the pony-cart, but it seems hardly worth while for this little distance.”
“A good mile. Where are you bound for?”
“I want to see Mrs. Brown; Kitty was rather troublesome in Sunday-school last Sunday.”
“And how nicely you manage that class. It is a credit to you. Camelia now laughs at it.” Mary said nothing to this, and Mrs. Jedsley added, “Not that she has much heart for laughing at anything just now from what I hear. That is the very encouraging feature of the whole case. It is ridiculous to speak of her as setting feathers in her cap with a light heart. She really feels this sad affair.”